The Last Days of Big Law: You Can’t Imagine the Terror When the Money Dries Up

The story that will make you reconsider law school. Scheiber goes deep inside a big Chicago law firm, Mayer Brown, to examine the problems plaguing the legal profession—including consolidation, cost-cutting, layoffs, infighting, and further degradation of quality of life:

“Bob Helman realized the firm would go under if his partners sat around waiting for business to walk in the door. Hereafter, he decreed, each partner’s compensation would depend heavily on the amount of business he or she drummed up.

“Helman’s plan may have worked too well. Ever since it went into effect, partners have competed aggressively not just against lawyers at other firms, but against one another. Chicago partners would fly into New York to poach clients from their Manhattanite counterparts, holding clandestine meetings in which they would pitch themselves as less expensive and a mere two-hour plane ride away.7 When the New Yorkers invariably caught wind of these plots, they would remind clients that they were far more efficient than their Midwestern cousins. ‘What we would end up saying is … “Chicago will staff you with four partners on something we’d staff with one or two,”‘ recalls a former partner. ‘It’s crazy that I have to go in and have a conversation about it. Denigrating.'”

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Published: Jul 22, 2013
Length: 28 minutes (7,164 words)
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